What makes it even funnier is that Saxon is widely viewed as the worst-sounding of all the German dialects. I was once trapped in a train compartment with four Saxon soldiers and after an hour I was ready to pour acid in my ears. It would've burned less.

dtp883 wrote:Huixuan, may I ask what you mean by native speaker since in your introduction you say that you grew up with Spanish so it comes naturally. This implies to me that you are not native just that you have an adept ability to learn/understand it. Which country do you live in?

Neqitan,

The second part is wrong. It should be:...hasta que levantó el teléfono...hasta que levantara el teléfononot using "antes de + inf." / "antes de que + subj." (In your correction you'd have said "antes de levantar"/"antes de que levantara".)

Why would one use the subjunctive here? Also, the blue part, do you mean you wouldn't use that or you could? Thanks!

Wow, you're right. That was a wildly weird post. I wish I could go back and edit it...

(And I have no idea why I said "hasta que levantara el teléfono" was an option in this context, although it could be used in other contexts.)--------------------------------------Then, unrelated to the correction, I mentioned that you got the use of "antes de" wrong, which is only followed by either an infinitive or "que + subj.", as a rule intrinsic to the expression, it's a question of vocabulary. No matter what context, "antes de" just can't be followed by a verb in the indicative (as you did in *antes de llamó).

You usually use the indicative when the subject of both the main clause and the secondary clause are the same:

You usually use the subjunctive when the subject of the main clause is different than the one in the secondary clause:

(Yo) Pensé en darle un regalo antes de que se fuera (él) de regreso a los Estados Unidos, pero al final no lo hice.I thought on giving him a gift before he went back to the U.S., but in the end I didn't do it.(With the infinitive, rare in turn: "(Yo) Pensé en darle un regalo antes irse (él) de regreso a los Estados Unidos".)

What makes it even funnier is that Saxon is widely viewed as the worst-sounding of all the German dialects. I was once trapped in a train compartment with four Saxon soldiers and after an hour I was ready to pour acid in my ears. It would've burned less.

I do know that this whole line of argumentation is tendentious, as it ignores completely the difference in context between the two comments.

I think I was pretty straightforward about it sounding bad to me. My point is that linguistic taste is something that's entirely subjective and what sounds good to someone might sound awful to another. I don't think there is a problem with acknowledging that I don't like the sound of X language variety. Granted, this might be different if I were talking to a native speaker of this variety.

Talib wrote:I don't think there is a problem with acknowledging that I don't like the sound of X language variety. Granted, this might be different if I were talking to a native speaker of this variety.

That, I think, is the crucial difference here. It's one thing to make a generic statement along the lines of "I don't like X variety" and another to say "The way that you have just told me you speak the language sounds infantile and you should correct it."

Moreover, in case it wasn't obvious from the absurd hyperbole (or do you really think I'd actually destroy my inner ear to avoid hearing to a particular variety?), I was joking when I made that statement. You, by contrast, sound dead serious. That's part of what I mean about context. Even Saxons will make self-deprecating remarks about the way they talk. There's a tradition of Germans mocking each others' way of speaking. They know, for instance, that the easiest way to wind up a speaker of a Lower Alemannic dialect like me is to call it "Swabian". It's all meant in fun. If there's any fun in your statements above, it's escaped me entirely.